1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to technology for analyzing a biological sample, and more particularly, to a biological sample analysis system and method.
2. Discussion of Related Art
In general, a sample of each test target is individually tested to examine whether or not a biological sample of the test target has a specific property as in an example of testing a blood sample to examine whether the blood sample has been infected with a specific virus or whether the blood sample has a specific mutation causing a disease. Therefore, when a large number of samples are tested, much time and cost are required for as many repetition tests as the number of samples.
The most basic method of carrying out the same test on a large number of samples is to individually carry out the test on each sample. At this time, cost for the test increases as much as the number of samples to be tested. For example, when a selective test is carried out for a disease with low incidence, most tested samples show negative results. To reduce cost for the test in this case, methods for testing several samples at a time have been proposed.
In one existing method for testing several samples at a time, a test is carried out on a sample obtained by mixing several samples at different ratios, and it is determined which one of the mixed samples has a specific property according to the intensity of a signal indicating the specific property in results of the test. However, as the number of samples to be tested at a time increases, this method requires a large amount of samples to be mixed. For example, to test 16 samples at a time, the samples are mixed at a ratio of 1:2:22:23 . . . 214:215. This case requires the last sample as much as 215 (=32,768) times the first sample, and it is almost impossible to apply such a large amount of sample in practice.
There are US Unexamined Patent Application Publication Nos. 2010-0216666 (Aug. 26, 2010) and 2012-0185177 (Jul. 19, 2012) as the patent literature of the related art.